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Whilst wandering about on the many side quests I have come across a few dragons that have decided to attack me.

I have quite a few shout powers that are ready to be activated having "seen the writing on the walls". The way I understand it, I have to absorb 3 dragon souls for each power to be fully operational.

So far I think I've absorbed 6 dragon souls and my only shout powers are Unrelenting Force, the first one received, and Whirlwind Sprint.

All the rest remain greyed out.

The random dragons that are now attacking me when I am in their vicinity - when I succeed in killing them, I can search them and remove whatever is available but the dragon does not self combust and I don't get the absorption effect.

Can anyone explain?

Am I missing something?

There is a "known bug" where a re-spawned dragon (i.e. a dragon that replaces one you've already killed) won't 'self-combust' or give you a soul when it dies.

I'm not sure how the game manages random dragons but I suppose it's possible the game counts each entry on the random table as being a unique dragon that keeps being re-spawned again and again - so the more random dragons you kill the less likely you are to meet a 'new' dragon and get a soul.

On my last Skyrim playthrough I saw a lot of that (though tbh I can't remember if they were all random and/or re-spawning dragons or what) but still managed to snag 52 souls total. Best thing, I think, is to just keep exploring new places and you should find dragons with souls.

I hadn't completed Act I of the main quest line. I have now!

I killed the regenerating dragon before he went live and the absorption process occurred and I got the soul. I then went off back to the Greybeards and handed the horn to Arngeir to complete that bit.

I don't know if this has anything to do with the problem but I seem to have totally sidetracked myself with the multitude of side and faction quests before paying too much attention to the central storyline.

What do you reckon?

You have to hit 'X' on your controls to spend a Dragon Soul and unlock a Word. They do not unlock automatically when you absorb a dragon's soul (except for the Unrelenting Force and Whirlwind Sprint words you gained already).

Dark Spark wrote:You have to hit 'X' on your controls to spend a Dragon Soul and unlock a Word. They do not unlock automatically when you absorb a dragon's soul (except for the Unrelenting Force and Whirlwind Sprint words you gained already).

Beg pardon?

Can you please enlarge and clarify the process please?

I can't seem to find any reference to this either in the game guide or the wiki so I may have been missing out on something here.

Dark Spark is talking about this:

To acquire a dragon shout, or to strengthen an existing shout:
Discover and approach a word wall to learn a word of power.
Unlock the word by selecting or hovering over it, and pressing R (PC), X (Xbox), or Square (PS3). To unlock a word, you must use a dragon soul that you have absorbed. If you have no dragon souls available, you must kill a dragon and absorb its soul.

I don't have a Skyrim savegame to check the details with but from memory I think you bring up the in-game menu then go through Magic then Shouts? Or something. It's in there somewhere.

Edit: Yep - "Character menu > Magic > Shouts" then move your 'cursor' down onto an unlocked shout. It will tell you the number of dragon souls you have in the bottom right of the screen and the button you press to unlock the shout in the bottom left.